Caverns of Thracia & Dark Tower

Goodman Games reprints
Caverns of Thracia, published in 1979 by Judges Guild stands as one of the great play aids in the history of our hobby. Author Jennell Jaquays writing under the name Paul Jaquays, gives us a dungeon with a theme, monsters that make sense in the environment, multiple entrances and exits, multiple paths around each level and multiple ways to go up and down between levels. In other words, she teaches us how to do a dungeon adventure.
Caverns of Thracia is a pseudo ancient Greek mini-campaign setting that includes a ruined polis and four-level dungeon beneath. There are competing factions, the Death Cult of Thanatos and lots of other challenges to entertain players. Quite popular still and long out-of-print, Caverns of Thracia demands a pretty high price when it can be found on the secondary market.
Dark Tower, also originally published by Judges Guild in 1979 and authored by Ms. Jaquays is another classic dungeon adventure and well deserves a reprint. Dark Tower is the creation of an evil god set on destroying the forces of good, who conveniently live nearby. The Play aid draws the adventurers into the conflict between good and evil, fought out by cultists and priests, adventurers and monsters, and the gods themselves. Before I make this sound like there is more plot than sandbox, there isn't. The play aid is basically a situation and an area, competing factions and a place for adventurers to make choices.
Goodman Games has been steadily re-releasing some of the better Judges Guild products over the last couple of years. These are play aids written for the Original and early Advanced versions of the game we love and have not been "updated" to the current edition. These modules are tough in terms of PC death and assume large parties of 6-10 characters. Fortunately, I think editions such as White Box are ideal for experienced players to handle two or even three PCs at a time. Having two or three PCs makes it less of a problem when one (or two) meet death in a dungeon delve. Most of my high-level PCs have died at least once, after-all there are spells in the old game to bring the dead PC back to life.
It is my opinion that Jennell (Paul) Jaquays is one of the unsung heroes of our hobby. I say this for a number of reasons, foremost is her considerable talent in writing Play Aids. In an era when we didn't get much from TSR in terms of dungeons or play aids, Ms. Jaquays wrote play aids for several different tabletop games systems before moving on to the computer industry and in the process gave us some excellent examples of how to do adventures and dungeons. I have heard the term Jaquaying a dungeon used to indicate "making it the right way". The few early TSR dungeons published were designed for tournament play which meant they were linear, deadly and often had little or no rhyme-or-reason to their "ecology".